Special Operators Must 'Reinvent' Themselves By Connie Lee, National Defense Magazine: “Mark Mitchell, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Feb. 28 special operators will not always have technological advantages over their enemies and must be prepared for a “great power competition.”

The Army’s Other Major Aviation Modernization ProgramBy Daniel Gouré, RealClearDefense: “The U.S. Army believes that future high-end conflicts will require aviation assets, particularly helicopters, that are long range, fast-moving and highly lethal. Future military helicopters will need to lift more weight, generate greater power and use less fuel.”

The Commanders RespondFrom Proceedings Magazine: “This year, Proceedings asked the commanders of the world’s navies, “Maintaining freedom of the seas and access to the global maritime commons requires naval partnerships, cooperation, and interoperability. What do you consider your navy ‘s greatest capability or best practice and how could other navies learn from yours?””

The Black Box of China’s Chinese Intelligence ServicesBy Alasdair Gordon, The Cipher Brief: “China’s intelligence and security services play a pivotal role in shaping how China’s leadership views the outside world – but we in that outside world don’t know much about how they provide guidance and direction to diplomats and security officials, or how they help form government policy.”

The Navy Needs to Reinvent Itself By Frank Goertner, CIMSEC: “Return to great power competition; revisionist powers; renewed capabilities; rebuild our military: such phrases feature prominently in recent U.S. national security guidance. They convey an imperative to look to the past as the nation prepares for a potentially volatile future.” ​

Cold War IIBy Richard N. Haass, The Strategist (ASPI): "The Cold War lasted four decades, in many ways both beginning and ending in Berlin. The good news is that it stayed cold—largely because nuclear weapons introduced a discipline missing from previous great-power rivalries—and that the United States, together with its European and Asian allies, emerged victorious, owing to sustained political, economic, and military effort that a top-heavy Soviet Union ultimately could not match."

Russia’s New (Old) Heavy ArmyBy Pavel Felgenhauer, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “After decades of reforms and transformations, and all the hype about hybrid warfare, it seems the Russian military is increasingly falling back on the good old tank-heavy model of the Soviet military created during the Cold War.”

Underwater Aircraft Carriers? By Robert Farley, The National Interest: “Both the United States and competitor nations have eagerly pursued the potential of UUVs. UUVs can contribute to both the hunting and the killing parts of ASW, although as of yet the only firm plans involve using them in the former.”

Why Air Force Is Rushing for a Sixth-generation Fighter JetBy Gillian Rich, Investor's Business Daily: “Lockheed Martin's F-35, a so-called fifth-generation fighter, hasn't hit full rate production yet, but the Air Force is already accelerating the development of a sixth-generation fighter as China ramps up its military.”

Amphibious Operations: Lessons of Past Campaigns for Today’s PLA By Kevin McCauley, China Brief: “Amphibious operations are important components of current PLA doctrinal writings and exercises. With no recent experience in amphibious warfare, PLA military science examines foreign and historical operations for guiding principles.”

The State of Defense 2018: Overview // Kevin Baron The one consensus seems to be the view that, under Trump, America is no longer the world’s clear leader. And that is a titanic change.

The State of the Army// Ben Watson From Africa to Afghanistan, the U.S. Army is expanding its nation-building and its operations against terrorists, even as thousands of stateside soldiers prepare for possible conflict in North Korea.

The State of the Navy// Bradley Peniston ​Operationally speaking, 2018 ought to be a back-to-basics year for a naval service shaken by a string of deadly mishaps.

The State of the Air Force// Marcus Weisgerber ​The U.S. Air Force finds itself amid several transitions. After years of shrinking, it’s adding people and planes. After years of counterinsurgency, it’s readying for fast-paced, complex war against Russia and China. After years of constrained training, training is now a top priority.

The State of the Marine Corps​ // Caroline Houck If there’s one service that embodies the tension the U.S. military faces — unable to turn away from an ongoing counterterrorism fight, but knowing it needs to refocus on great-power conflict — it’s the Marine Corps.

Can the Army Prepare for China and Russia, and Fight Terror?By Dave Majumdar, The National Interest: “The United States Army will receive increased funding in the President’s fiscal year 2019 budget proposal as the service struggles to modernize while simultaneously fighting wars in current conflicts. The problem the Army must solve is how to deter Russia and China while dealing with today’s challenges.”

China’s ballistic missile development program is the “most active and diverse” in the world, with the Asian power close to having “the ability to deploy a nuclear triad for the first time,” the head of U.S. Strategic Command warned last week. - Defense News

RUSSIA: Status-6: Russia's 100-Megaton Nuclear Torpedo​By Lyle J. Goldstein, The National Interest: “This “megaton-class nuclear weapon” [ядерное оружие мегатонного класса], as described by one Russian source, is delivered by an unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) and has the potential to exterminate a significant portion of the U.S. population in a single doomsday blow if deployed against the East Coast of the United States.”

Repair and rebuild: Balancing new military spending for a three-theater strategyMackenzie Eaglen | American Enterprise Institute To reduce the chance of war and restore the credibility of America's nonmilitary tools of power, the US must quickly repair and rebuild its military. Yet lawmakers and Pentagon leaders must also ensure that the necessary haste of repairing and rebuilding the force does not lead to shortsighted choices.

The already forgotten Trump budgetJames C. Capretta | Real Clear Policy The Trump administration has produced a budget that is remarkable for its glaring disconnection from political and fiscal reality. It inherited a federal budget that was badly out of balance — and then promptly made the situation worse. The current trend toward growing deficits and debt will continue and likely get much worse.

The consequences that stem from a half-dozen years of funding cuts without a corresponding reduction in demand for the military came to a visible and tragic crescendo last summer with two Navy ship collisions and the unnecessary deaths of 17 sailors. The Trump administration’s recently announced FY2019 budget represents a 13 percent increase over FY2017 defense spending, which is significant. However, asMackenzie Eaglen explains in her latest AEIdeas blog, this new money is primarily intended to fill the hole dug by the Budget Control Act and other woes. In Trumpian terms, it is not enough to buy a “bigly” buildup.Find out why here.​In the meantime, there are key signals that Congress and the Pentagon can send to American adversaries that a defense buildup is real and that change is coming to the force. Eaglen outlines a few ways to do this in a War on the Rocks op-ed. Secretary of Defense James Mattis should support increasing the fleet size quickly with little risk by working to eliminate onerous requirements such as shock trials. Congress could also signal its enduring commitment to a genuine buildup by curtailing accounting gimmicks such as the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund. Read what else can be donehere.

Small Unit Dominance From National Defense Magazine: “Whether they are Marine Corps grunts, soldiers on patrol or special operators carrying out missions behind enemy lines, dismounted warfighters are among the most vulnerable on the battlefield.”

Army Defends Shortchanging Future Modernization in 2019 Budget By Matthew Cox, DoD Buzz: “For months, senior leaders have been stressing that the Army can no longer continue to make incremental improvements to its outdated fleet of aircraft, tanks, armored vehicles and fires platforms. Instead, they argue that the service must begin to build a future fleet of modern weapons systems capable of out-matching the modernized fleets of Russia and China.”

Details are scant on what the Army’s new Futures Command will look like or how it will be organized, but the service’s under secretary said it could reside in a city. “It will probably be in a city where we are going to put this Futures Command,” Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy said at a Brookings Institution event Feb. 8, “where there is access to academia and business.” - Defense News

The U.S. Army is going to assess the possibility of putting a 50-kilowatt laser onto its short-range air defense, or SHORAD, objective solution in less than five years, according to the service’s fiscal 2019 budget justification documents released Feb. 12. - Defense News

RUSSIA: The Return of the CommissarsBy Aleksandr Golts, Eurasia Daily Monitor: “The Russian Army is planning to recreate the Main Political Directorate that existed in the Soviet Army (GlavPUR), according to the Deputy Chairman of the Public Council at the Russian Ministry of Defense, Alexander Kanshin. “The role of the moral and political unity of the army and society is increasing immensely at the time of global informational and psychological confrontation.”

How the defense budget falls short of strategic demandsMackenzie Eaglen | Axios Secretary Mattis’ national defense strategy targets readiness, lethality, and reforms to better counter great power competition from China and Russia. Yet President Trump’s budget calls for only a 2 percent annual increase in defense spending — enough to dig the Pentagon out of its current hole, but not enough to pursue the pivot Mattis envisions.

China Will 'Pull the Trigger' in the South China SeaBy Gordon C. Chang, The National Interest: “James Fanell, once the top intelligence officer of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet and now a noted commentator on defense matters, is concerned that the Chinese desire confrontation to achieve their “centennial goal of the great rejuvenation” of the Chinese state. This goal, he told The National Interest, “requires the consolidation of all its perceived territories, to include the maritime territories of the South and East China Sea.””

Building Armies, Building Nations: Toward a New Approach to Security Force AssistanceMichael Shurkin, John Gordon IV, Bryan Frederick, Christopher G. PerninEvents in Iraq and Mali have raised questions about the value of Security Force Assistance and U.S. capacity to strengthen client states' militaries in the face of insurgencies or other threats. History shows that SFA programs could be improved if they focused more on ideology and how an army complements a host country's larger nation-building efforts.Read more »

Mattis: There Is No Such Thing as a 'Tactical' Nuke By Richard Sisk, Military.com: “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said there is "no such thing" as a tactical nuclear weapon in the context of strategies that consider the use of so-called "low yield" weapons to avert all-out nuclear war.”

How China Understands WarfareChina's army now characterizes warfare as a clash between opposing operational systems—not merely one between armies. That's according to a new RAND report. Thus, warfare no longer focuses on the annihilation of enemies on the battlefield. Rather, victory goes to the side that can disrupt, paralyze, or destroy the enemy's system.Read more »

China Has Big Plans to Win the Next War By Jeffrey Engstrom, The National Interest: “As a result of extensive examination of these conflicts and others, the PLA now views modern conflict as a confrontation between opposing systems, or what are specifically referred to as opposing operational systems.”

The Russian Way of Warfare: A PrimerScott Boston, Dara Massicot
The Russian armed forces are not like the Soviet Army in size, depth, or global ideological aspirations. But Russia has demonstrated its military competence and operational flexibility in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Syria. Read more »

An Army Trying to Shake Itself From Intellectual Slumber By David Johnson, War on the Rocks: “For the past three decades, the U.S. military has lived off the concepts and eroding capabilities for conflicts against peer adversaries that it developed during the Cold War. For the Army, AirLand Battle is the last fully institutionalized intellectual and doctrinal warfighting construct intended for high-end adversaries, although there have been several replacement candidates in recent years.”

Seth G. Jones writes: The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy outline a U.S. shift from counterterrorism to inter-state competition with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. However, U.S. policymakers need to be prepared for much of this competition to occur at the unconventional level, since the costs of conventional and nuclear war would likely be catastrophic. - Center for Strategic & International Studies​Rep. Mac Thornberry writes: The United States’ nuclear deterrent has been the cornerstone of our national defense and of international stability since World War II. Today, operating, sustaining, and recapitalizing our nuclear deterrent accounts for only about 4 percent of our overall defense budget, yet its value to America’s security is incalculable. - Defense News

America’s Two Doctrines By Sam Roggeveen, the interpreter: “China’s rise presents a type of challenge America has never faced before in the Asia Pacific: in economic terms it is much more substantial than the Soviet Union (always more of a European power), and on present trends China’s military capabilities in the region will match those of the U.S. in a decade or two.”​